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Ontario school boards are scrambling to cover a record number of teachers taking time off, as they use sick days they no longer can bank until retirement.

The sudden need for substitute teachers in recent weeks has so outstripped supply — especially on Fridays and Mondays — that some elementary principals have asked librarians, special education and ESL teachers to scrap regular duties for a day to supervise classrooms.

A handful of high schools have cancelled classes in the senior grades for lack of a teacher.

“Last Friday we had the highest volume of teachers taking ‘family responsibility’ days we’ve ever seen; but our ‘fill rates’ (the number of vacancies they could fill) are very low — this is an irregular level of vacancies,” noted Scott Moreash, associate director of the Peel District School Board. A record 1,664 of Peel’s 10,000 teachers were absent last Friday, of whom only 1,210 could be replaced with a substitute teacher.

“So principals are having to be creative; some are filling in for teachers themselves,” said Moreash. Peel recently lifted a ban against using people who are not certified teachers — lunchroom supervisors, community volunteers — to supervise students on an emergency, short-term basis, he added.

The board has launched a hiring blitz for supply teachers for the fall.

“Are we now in a phase where there will be more absences?” asked Moreash. “Is this the new normal?”

Under the controversial new contract imposed this year by Queen’s Park, Ontario teachers had their sick days cut from 20 to 11 per year, and lost the right to bank unused sick days.

“Some teachers had an almost sentimental attachment to idea of banking sick leave, even if they couldn’t end up using them,” said Doug Jolliffe, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation in Toronto.

“So losing that led to a sense of anger. Could that lead to people taking them now? It could . . . but I haven’t heard that it has.” On the contrary, Jolliffe said there’s still some incentive to keep three sick days unused, because you can bank them for one year to top up long-term disability if needed.

However, the Toronto Catholic District School Board expects it will be almost 7 per cent over budget on occasional teachers this year — or about $1.35 million.

“That says to me there’s an obvious increase in the use of supply teachers that is outside the normal forecast,” said Trustee John Del Grande.

The Toronto District School Board saw more teachers absent than usual in May, although Martin Long, president of the Elementary Teachers of Toronto, blames the problem as much on a shortage of supply teachers as a surge in teachers calling in sick.

Linda Bartram is president of the high school supply teachers’ bargaining unit in Toronto, and she, too, said she doesn’t believe there are more teachers booking off, but rather fewer supply teachers available in June, when retirees who work as supply teachers likely have used up their allotted 50 days a year.

The president of the Toronto Elementary Catholic Teachers said another reason for the shortage of substitute teachers is the fact his board didn’t have enough in the first place and must hire “several hundred more.”

The union, added Mario Bernardo, has always made it clear that sick days are only to be used for illness.

“When there’s a lack of confidence in workers or people feel they are abusing these systems, that’s not in the interest of any work group,” he added.

But the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association says it warned the government the new contract could spark this problem at the end of the school year, disrupting children’s learning and unsettling high school students as they prepare to write exams.

“Because it’s a policy of use-them-or-lose-them, we did predict this back in November,” said president Michael Barrett, who has heard concerns about high teacher absenteeism across the province.

Barrett said 11 sick days is “still a very generous sick-day policy,” considering teachers work 10 months of the year and teach nine months. “It’s still above what you’d see in the industry standard.” He hopes the issue will be addressed when teacher contracts come up in 2014.

In the past, teachers took an average of eight sick days off per year. But TDSB trustee Jerry Chadwick noted that the old system gave you an incentive to come to work “even if you had a migraine,” for the sake of the students — and those unused days could be banked in case of serious illness or paid out at retirement.

“What worries me most is that this new rule will change the whole culture to ‘I might as well use them by the end of the year,’” said Chadwick, a former Scarborough principal.

Six elementary principals in his ward told Chadwick Monday they are scrambling every day with “one or two unfilled supply positions — one school with 24 teachers had a day when six were away, and only four positions could be filled,” said Chadwick.

“That’s one-quarter of your staff. That’s huge.”

The Star was alerted to the high number of absences by some teachers who are upset with the impact the high absenteeism is having on students and staff.

“It’s very unprofessional, and we consider ourselves professionals,” said one longtime Toronto Catholic teacher who asked not to be named.

“Special education is just cancelled,” the teacher added. “The kids are fully integrated (in regular classrooms) but they’re not getting that extra level of help they required.

“Parents were worried about kids not getting extracurriculars — but now they’re not even getting curricular.”

Another teacher said “there’s still a lot of bitterness” around the contracts that were initially forced on teachers by the province.

“We got rid of work-to-rule, but in a sense, this is a silent protest.

“Everybody thinks now that (deals) have been signed, there’s labour peace,” said one teacher. “But there is chaos within.”

Toronto Trustee Howard Goodman said it was clear that instead of having teachers bank days, “a great many of them were going to take them — particularly when the weather got warm at the end of the year, when it’s tempting to be outside.

“We warned them this would likely be the case, and that they would save no money because of the increased absenteeism around the end of the year.”

Goodman also noted that changes to short-term disability now mean that teachers have up to 120 days at 90 per cent pay, whereas before they used their banked sick days to fund it. He said boards expect some to take advantage of it, and that, in the end, it will cost boards more.

The ministry also extended sick leave benefits to part-time employees — such as lunchroom supervisors — which “will have significant and crushing blow on the budgets of a whole bunch of boards.”

“We have been telling the province all these things; they know the implications but they are going and buying a deal with unions over our considered and urgent requests.”

Ken Arnott, who heads the Ontario Principals’ Council, has been visiting schools around the province and said members have been telling him “that it has been a challenge; there have been a lot more vacancies that they have been trying to fill, for a variety of reasons.”

In some cases, it is because teachers are taking part in extracurricular activities or taking students on field trips, now that the union’s “pause” on such activities is over.

“Mondays and Fridays are particularly difficult, because supply teachers may or may not make themselves available on those days too.”

“I’ve definitely been seeing that in my school — and frankly it’s not a surprise,” said Hirad Zafari, student trustee for the Toronto District School Board. “In light of Bill 115, it’s a logical decision by teachers to use up as much of their non-bankable sick days.”

Kourosh Houshmand said he’s had “a lot more substitute teachers this past month or so,” but no classes cancelled.

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